Two Americans killed, one injured in kidnapping in Mexico: Official

Mexican official says two Americans kidnapped in Mexico are dead, two alive after the Matomoros kidnapping.

Two of the four US citizens abducted after crossing the frontier in northeastern Mexico they have been found dead, a senior Mexican official said.

The Attorney General of the Republic confirmed that of the four kidnapped “two of them are dead, one person is injured and the other is alive,” the governor of the state of Tamaulipas, Américo Villarreal, told the Mexican president by telephone at a conference in press this Tuesday.

The governor did not share any additional details about where or how the people were found.

A Mexican official told the Reuters news agency on Tuesday that of the four hostages, two men had been found dead.

A woman and another man were alive, safe and in the hands of authorities, the official said.

Mexican President Manuel López Obrador said one person was in custody in connection with the kidnapping in Tamaulipas, which has long been one of the most violent states in Mexico.

The four US citizens had crossed from Texas to Matamoros, Mexico on Friday when their white minivan was shot at in what authorities said was crossfire from rival cartel groups

Video later surfaced showing the four hostages being loaded into the back of a pickup truck by armed men. Mexican authorities said a Mexican woman was also killed in the crossfire on Friday.

The US Embassy in Mexico issued a security advisory for Matamoros on Friday, saying it was “classified as Level 4: Do Not Travel.”

The city of Matamoros is dominated by factions of the powerful Gulf drug cartel that often fight each other.

Amid the violence, thousands of Mexicans have disappeared in the state of Tamaulipas alone, adding to the more than 100,000 people reported missing in the country in recent decades, the vast majority after 2007, when the Mexican government launched a militarized offensive against drug cartels.

Despite the response, the violence has persisted, with cartels vying for control in large swaths of the country.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation had offered a $50,000 reward “for the return of the victims and the arrest of those involved.”